Category Archives: Halloween 2012

We’re jumping back over to the Filmation Ghostbusters cartoon for today’s 31 Days of Monsters post. This cel features Jake Kong Jr. facing off against a giant colossus, and it comes from the episode #13 (production # 68008) titled “A Friend in Need” from 1986. In the episode, Prime Evil’s boss, Big Evil, decides to take over the organizational duties at Hauntquarters and it’s up to Jake, Eddie and Tracy to team up with Prime Evil to take Big Evil down!

This cel is from a segment where Big Evil animates two huge statues laying around Hauntquaters, and sends them after the heroes. This giant metal colossus is pretty neat and reminds me a bit of the character design of Calibos from the original Clash of the Titans (p.s. world, I hate having to type “original” Clash of the Titans.) Like most of the Filmation Ghostbusters cels I was able to acquire, this one was accompanied by a vintage production photocopy of the background…

…though in this case the background isn’t accurate (though it was taped to the cels to keep them in place on it which is weird.) Checking in this episode I can see that the BG is a bit different (though both feature the Hauntquarters setting.)

Either way, I’m glad to have it and honestly, it’s pretty darn awesome even all by its lonesome!

I love the quality in the Filmation backgrounds, it was always an area where they never skimped…

So come back each day this month for a new monster animation cel, and also, for more Halloween-y fun all month long, be sure to check out the Countdown to Halloween website for the complete list of sites participating in this year’s spooky fun. John Rozum has been working hard compiling the list, and it looks like there is a lot of awesome sites already signed up.

Well, it’s Day 3, and I’m bouncing back to a couple of animation cels from The Real Ghostbusters featuring Peter Venkman, Luis Tully, and more importantly (to this countdown) Shifter, the greasy ex-stooge of gangster Boss Poso (who will be making an appearance shortly) from the episode Partners in Slime (which originally aired in season 5, 1989.)

This episode is fun because it’s one of the few in the series that calls back to events from the live action movies, in particular the Psychomagnotheric “mood” Slime from Ghostbusters II. In an effort to become the kingpin of the spectral underworld, Poso kidnaps both Janine and Luis and the only way to get them back is for Shifter to smuggle Peter into Ghost Town (in New Jersey of all places.) In order for the rouse to work, Peter has to be covered head to toe in the mood slime recovered after the battle with Vigo in GBII so that he can look ghostly and have limited spectral powers (like flight.) For some reason the slime is yellow in the cartoon instead of the soft bubblegum pink of the film.

I guess in a way, since the slime is almost sentient, today features two ghosts. I wanted to include this second cel from my collection so illustrate what Peter looks like fully covered in the episode. Also, you’ll notice a sneak peak at Friday’s Ghost, as we can see a rather large pink tail that belongs to a certain mobster spook…

Also, a quick note about the original pencil drawing that accompanied this second cel. As someone who loves cartoons, both the final episodes and all the behind the scenes work that goes into creating them, I can’t help but get a little bummed at how these elements were treated after the shows were finished being produced. Unfortunately, at the time (in the 80s) there wasn’t a huge demand for these cels and pieces of production artwork so it was common to just stack hundreds of them in boxes (cels interspersed with their corresponding production drawing or photocopy of the background artwork) and have them shipped off to an un-climate-controlled storage unit, left to rot for years. Luckily a lot of the cels and drawings survived, but many became fused together as the paint on the cels melted and re-dried to the drawings underneath. The below damage isn’t all that severe, but I do have some where the production drawing had to be destroyed in order to get a good scan of the cel. It always kills me when this happens. Anyway, off the soapbox I hop…

So come back each day this month for a new monster animation cel, and also, for more Halloween-y fun all month long, be sure to check out the Countdown to Halloween website for the complete list of sites participating in this year’s spooky fun. John Rozum has been working hard compiling the list, and it looks like there is a lot of awesome sites already signed up.

Alright, it’s day 2 of the 31 Days of Monsters Halloween Countdown, and since I started out with a cel from the Real Ghostbusters yesterday it’s time to switch things up and visit one from Filmation’s Ghostbusters! I like to start these cel countdowns with stuff that’s either not-so-scary, or with characters that might otherwise be considered one of the good guys. So, sort of like the Slimer cel, I was thinking of a character that would be sort of similar in the Filmation universe and the one that immediately sprung to mind was Ghost Buggy!

Certainly a “must” for any Ghostbusters outfit worth its salt is a sweet, yet temperamental ride, and Ghost Buggy fits that bit to a T (a haunted Model T that is.) This southern jalopy is not only sentient, but he can also transform into all sorts of vehicles from a car to a plane, a train, and can even travel through time! DeLorean, eat your heart out.

One of the aspects that I love about Ghost Buggy is that his face doubles at the logo for the team. Whereas the Real Ghostbusters cartoon writers and series developers did their best to work in the “No Ghosts” logo specter into the opening credits and interstitials, Ghost Buggy is actually a part of the team in the Filmation series. In a way GB is almost the ultimate 80s cartoon logo/faction symbol in this manner (think the Autobot, Decepticon, Cobra, and Thundercats logos.)

Anyway, I was lucky enough to score a copy of this cel with one of the vintage Filmation background photocopies, so for once we can put this cel in context of a scene. Though I’ve yet to get my hands on some of the original Filmation background paintings, these photocopies really go a long way to making me feel like I have a small piece of this cartoon in my collection.

So come back each day this month for a new monster animation cel, and also, for more Halloween-y fun all month long, be sure to check out the Countdown to Halloween website for the complete list of sites participating in this year’s spooky fun. John Rozum has been working hard compiling the list, and it looks like there is a lot of awesome sites already signed up.

Welcome back to another Branded in the 80s Countdown to Halloween! This year marks my 7th year celebrating the season here on the site and I’m really excited to be able to resurrect the 31 Days of 80s Monster animation cels. Back in 2009, and again in 2010 I had the opportunity to share a total of 62 Real Ghostbusters monster, ghost and creature animation cels from my personal collection. This year I was able to dig up 31 new pieces, though I’ve decided to shake things up a bit and alternate between both the Real Ghostbusters and Filmation Ghostbusters cartoons. Though TRG is arguably the more popular franchise, oddly enough Filmation GB animation cels are much harder to come by. It’s taken me years to be able to find some, though only enough cels so that I could share them during half of my Halloween-y countdown. So I thought it would be fun to bounce back and forth.

To get this started though, lets go back to the 31 Days of Monsters roots with this awesome cel featuring everyone’s favorite focused, non-terminal repeating phantasm, or a Class 5 full roaming vapor (who can eat a vending cart full of hotdogs like no one else), Slimer!

I absolutely fell in love with this cel when I stumbled across it. Not only is Slimer wearing a great Hawaiian shirt, but that demonic expression is great. I actually ended up donating this exact cel to the recent Strange Kids Club Issue 3 kickstarter to help raise the funds needs to get that comix anthology printed. So this guy hopefully has found a new loving home where it will be displayed proudly in a “Strange” collection. Be sure to keep tabs on the Strange Kids Club to get the details on when Issue three will be available for public purchase, as it’s going to be an issue full of fun comics and articles that you won’t want to miss.

As a bonus, here’s a scan of the accompanying pencil sketch that the base animation cel was produced from…

So come back each day this month for a new monster animation cel, and also, for more Halloween-y fun all month long, be sure to check out the Countdown to Halloween website for the complete list of sites participating in this year’s spooky fun. John Rozum has been working hard compiling the list, and it looks like there is a lot of awesome sites already signed up.